Onalea Gilbertson honoured for city building art

Onalea Gilbertson in Blanche: The Bittersweet Life of a Wild Prairie Dame. Gilbertson won the Sandstone City Builder Award at the 2013 Mayor’s Lunch for the Arts.External

Emma Bresola, left, Jean Grand-Maitre, Michelle Minke, Eric Moschopedis and Mia Rushton were among those named Arts Champions on Thursday. They posed for a photograph at the By The Waters of the Bow statue on the Stampede grounds following the Mayor’s Lunch for the Arts on Thursday.Gavin Young
/ Calgary Herald

Adam Fisher (Alfred) and Michelle Minke (Rosalinda) in the Cowtown Opera production of Die Fledermaus (The Bat)at the Canmore Opera House at Heritage Park last May. Minke won the Enbridge Emerging Artist Award at the 2013 Mayor’s Lunch for the Arts.Stuart Gradon
/ Calgary Herald

Alberta Ballet artistic director Jean Grand-Maitre won the 2013 Doug and Lois Mitchell Outstanding Calgary Artist Award at the Mayor’s Lunch for the Arts on Thursday. He’s seen here with singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan at the premiere of the Alberta Ballet’s Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, based on McLachlan’s songs.Stuart Gradon
/ Calgary Herald

Mia Rushton and Eric Moschopedis in their studio at the Artist Market in the old Billingsgate Seafood building in the East Village. Moschopedis and Rushton won the Maclachlan Family Community Building Award on Thursday at the 2013 Mayor’s Lunch for the Arts.Lorraine Hjalte
/ Calgary Herald

That’s both the name of Onalea Gilbertson’s grandmother, as well as the inspiration behind Gilbertson’s hit show, Blanche: The Bittersweet Life of a Wild Prairie Dame. The play just finished a smash run at the 2013 High Performance Rodeo, following successful productions in New York and Washington in the summer of 2012.

Gilbertson was back in the news Thursday, when she was named winner of the Sandstone City Builder’s Award at the 2013 Mayor’s Lunch for the Arts, held at the Palomino Room in the BMO Centre.

The Rundle-raised singer and theatre artist was honoured for a year in which she travelled to New York to present Requiem for a Lost Girl: A Chamber Musical about Homelesslness, a show she developed with the Land’s End Chamber Ensemble and residents of the Drop In Centre.

Additionally, she co-created Only Love Knows Love, a cabaret of the songs of Calgary composer David Rhymer, a 2012 and 2013 High Performance Rodeo highlight; The Eviction of the Stuart Block, where she worked with homeless theatre artists to tell the story of a single building on 7th Avenue; Blanche; directed What Brought Us Here, the Calgary Opera community opera about our city’s newcomers; and recently debuted her latest, Torch Songs from the Gypsy Van.

Mayor Naheed Nenshi wholeheartedly endorsed the selection.

“We heard today,” said Nenshi, “that there were many, many, many nominees for the city builder award, and there were, but honestly, can we think of anyone else whose art builds the city, who tells stories about ourselves, about our community in a more unique, more exciting, and more impactful way than Onalea Gilbertson?”

Gilbertson was just one of the notable artists who were honoured at the sold-out event, which kicked off the 2013 Calgary Arts Champions Congress.

That two-day event will feature artists, arts champions and others who will explore, among other things, the idea of city building through the arts community.

That sentiment was echoed by Bill Maclachlan, the sponsor of the Maclachlan Family Community Beacon Award, which went to artists Eric Moschopedis and Mia Rushton.

“If a community is world class like Calgary,” said Maclachlan, in a video presentation of the awards, “you need a vibrant arts scene to attract people (to live there).”

“It really comes back to community,” Moschopedis said. “I think it’s the people (of Calgary) that keep us here.”

Grand-Maitre, who is busy preparing Balletlujah, a new ballet inspired by the songs of k.d. lang, for its world premiere in May, said in a video thank you the award affirmed the work he’s been doing at the Alberta Ballet for a decade now.

“I’m accepting this on behalf of all artists who live in Calgary,” Grand-Maitre said. “I’ve been here 10 years, and they’ve been the finest 10 years of my life.

“I feel so privileged,” he said, “to be here creating art in this city, at this time.”

Minke, who trained in Toronto and New York before founding the Cowtown Opera, observed that sometimes with cities, timing is everything.

“I moved back to Calgary at the perfect time,” Milke said. “There’s tons of exciting things happening here, and lots of people who think outside the box.”

* Emma Bresola, who emigrated to Calgary from Italy in 2010, won the CCIS New Canadian Artist Award.

Nenshi added that as much as the lunch was a celebration of the city’s artists, it was also intended to honour those who champion the city’s arts scene: the donors, sponsors and patrons.

“There are so many different roles we can all play in the arts,” he said.

The event also included the announcement of a new award to be given to a young emerging artist in 2014, sponsored by Telus.

The keynote speech was given by John Michael Schert, a Boise-based dancer and arts executive, in town to speak at the Arts Champion Congress.

Schert’s dance company serves as an economic and cultural ambassador for Boise and has been profiled in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and elsewhere. He encouraged business leaders to look to artists for innovation, inspiration and community leadership.

He had to toss out a bit of his speech, he said, when he realized that Calgary already embraces many of the ideas he espouses about city building through the arts community.

“You’re so far ahead of the curve (in arts),” he said, “and that’s something to be proud of.

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